KEY STAGE AGE
AT A GLANCE
EYFS
KS1
KS2
KS3
KS4
KS5
• IDENTITY
• SOCIETY
• RHYME
• METAPHOR
• PERFORMANCE
3-5
5-7
7-11
11-14
14-16
16-18
3
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WWW.POETRYSOCIETY.ORG.UK
POETRYCLASS: FRESH IDEAS FOR POETRY LEARNING FROM THE POETRY SOCIETY
IDENTITY AND
PERFORMANCE POETRY
Samilah Naira’s poem Denied of Identity was one of the
six winners of SLAMbassadors 2013, the Poetry Society’s
annual performance poetry championship. Judges Joelle
Taylor, Bea Colley and Hollie McNish chose Samilah and
the other SLAMbassadors from over 400 performances
by 12-18 year olds. As SLAMbassadors, the young poets
benefit from intensive masterclasses with Joelle Taylor,
ongoing professional development and a showcase at
London’s Southbank Centre.
Watch Samilah’s poem here:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=H3h8Dl2RBDw
Slam is the competitive art of performance poetry
before a loud and lively audience. Performance poetry
shares many features with traditional ‘page’ poetry,
such as metaphor and rhyme – they are not separate
types of writing. However, performance poetry tends
to have a particular emphasis on the sound of words,
using frequent and obvious rhyme and half-rhyme, and
the impassioned style of delivery particularly suits
political themes and issues surrounding identity. Indeed,
‘Identity’ is the theme of SLAMbassadors each year.
Samilah’s poem speaks on behalf of young women –
students might like to consider the pressures young
men face, too. Are these different?
Denied of identity
Magazines and manipulation
Samilah’s poem deals with the many pressures young
women face to look, think and act in the ‘right’ way.
She argues that female individuality is manipulated by
larger forces – technology, media, society.
In expressing her anger over the way modern society
constructs female identity, Samilah uses some of the
language of female magazines: “be you”, “have the
perfect figure”. With your students, look through some
teenage magazines and pick out phrases and ideas
which regularly crop up. What do these magazines
assume girls are interested in?
Listen to the poem with your students and get them to
list the aspects of modern technology which distort
girls’ sense of self-image. How do computers, TV and
pop culture influence the way we think? Can they think
of any further examples – for instance, how has the
internet affected the way people behave and interact
with the outside world?
Then, using Samilah’s poem as a starting-point, get
your students to compile a list of magazine headings
which would encourage young women’s development
and self-esteem.
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© 2013 POETRY SOCIETY & THE AUTHOR/S
DISTRIBUTION AUTHORISED FOR EDUCATIONAL USE ONLY
[email protected]
WWW.POETRYSOCIETY.ORG.UK
Glass bottles and instruction manuals
The power of words
Samilah uses a wide range of metaphors to express her
ideas about identity. With the class, discuss Samilah’s
imagery and how she deepens her argument using
metaphor. What does it mean to say that women’s
brains are made into computers, their bodies are etched
glass bottles, and they come with instruction manuals?
To enhance the power of her poem, Samilah uses
forceful rhymes and half-rhymes such as “victim /
religion / wind”, “shatter / pressure / figure” and
“individuality / society / insanity / personality/
insecurity / melody”. Note with your students how
words like “shatter” and “pressure” don’t look the
same, but echo each other when heard aloud. All the
rhymes in Samilah’s poem help bind it together, and
give her work a music which makes it satisfying to
listen to.
Encourage your students to come up with their own
metaphor for a young person’s individuality and / or
body. It could be anything – snowflake, boat, animal…
Get them to write down the ways in which their
metaphor represents an individual’s identity. For
example, a spider spins its own totally unique web
which it needs to survive; this web is strong and keeps
the spider high and out of danger, but it is also
vulnerable to attack; a spider’s silk helps it fly through
the air; if a web is destroyed, the spider builds another
one. You could string these metaphors together to
create a collaborative class poem.
Get your students to write their own poem on the
theme of identity, with an emphasis on internal rhyme
and half-rhyme – it doesn’t have to be at the ends of
the lines, necessarily. Students could use Samilah’s
rhyming words to create a framework for their own
poems, or you could come up with a set of rhyming
words as a class (you could also use a rhyming
dictionary or a website like www.rhymezone.com) and
use these.
When you have your class set of poems, encourage
students to perform them with lots of feeling.
To find out more about SLAMbassadors UK, please
visit www.poetrysociety.org.uk/slam
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© 2013 POETRY SOCIETY & THE AUTHOR/S
DISTRIBUTION AUTHORISED FOR EDUCATIONAL USE ONLY
[email protected]